In a significant funding boost geared toward revitalising local churches and expanding outreach efforts, the Church of England has announced a latest wave of grants supporting parishes across each urban and rural communities.
The funding, awarded by the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB), will support a big selection of initiatives focused on mission, leadership development, and community engagement.
Grants have been allocated to the Dioceses of Ipswich and Winchester, Rochester, St Edmundsbury, Carlisle, Sheffield and Chelmsford.
These funds will underwrite projects from church planting and leadership training to youth work and outreach in underserved neighbourhoods.
A grant of £6.45 million has been awarded to Chelmsford in support of its ‘Believing in Barking,’ a programme serving East London communities.
The initiative goals to strengthen local parishes through support for youth and youngsters’s ministries, outreach in minority communities, and mission efforts in local estates.
Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani of Chelmsford described the programme as a mirrored image of the Church’s “commitment to participative change,” empowering communities to shape their very own expressions of religion “as a part of one diocesan family.”
Sheffield Diocese is about to receive £14.3 million to construct on its successful Centenary Project. The allocated funds will support parish renewal efforts in Rotherham, Goole, and Doncaster, expand youth, lay, music and family ministries, enhance clergy wellness and church infrastructure, and establish Sheffield Cathedral as a hub for digital evangelism, music ‘missioners,’ and a recently established religious community committed to outreach.
Carlisle Diocese will receive £6.8 million to launch fresh networks of worshippers in places like Barrow-in-Furness and the agricultural Derwent Deanery.
The funding includes a significant investment in leadership training for greater than 200 emerging leaders and a three-year pilot programme to advertise expansion and leadership formation in rural parishes.
The St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocese is about be granted £2.7 million to expand mission initiatives in Ipswich and surrounding rural areas, including outreach to latest housing developments and the usage of music as a tool for engagement.
Rochester Diocese will profit from an £11 million investment for parish revitalisation in Medway, Kent, and parts of southeast London. The funding will support youth and family work, clergy and lay well-being, leadership cultivation, and apprenticeship opportunities.
Winchester Diocese also received a lift, with £412,333 allocated to St Clement’s Church in Boscombe, an area of serious poverty and multicultural presence. The funding will enable the church to employ a children and families outreach employee and make much-needed upgrades to its facilities, with additional support depending on future grant approvals.
The Chair of SMMIB, Carl Hughes, celebrated the range and ambition of the funded projects, remarking: “The awards reflect the commitment of the Board to investment in parishes and their leaders, and the work of parishes in developing latest services and congregations to serve those they are usually not currently reaching, particularly in essentially the most income deprived contexts. Many of those awards construct on previous investments in parishes.”
